Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/81

Rh knowledge of the Common Law than I possessed was necessary to act in that station with credit, I gradually withdrew from it; excusing myself by being obliged to attend the higher duties of a legislator in the Assembly.

He was on 3 September, 1776, appointed Presiding Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and in October, 1785, while President Supreme Executive Council was appointed President Judge; but there is no certainty of his ever sitting. Gordon says of him, in connection with his Assembly duties:

His active, comprehensive, and discriminating mind qualified him at all times to lead in a popular body; but his knowledge of provincial affairs at once placed him at the head of the assembly, and caused him to be appointed upon every important committee.

His rank as a Philosopher was earned by his success and discoveries in Electricity which had begun about this period in his life. Mr. Peter Collinson, a member of the Royal Society, who had been commissioned to send books to the Philadelphia Library, sent out early in 1747 an "electric tube with directions for using it," which Franklin in acknowledging it said "has put several of us on making electrical experiments, in which we have observed some particular phenomena, that we look upon to be new." His friends referred to were Hopkinson, Syng and Kinnersley, the latter of whom in 1753 became the Head Master of the English School connected with the Academy, and in 1755 was chosen Professor of Oratory and English Literature in the College. In writing to Mr. Collinson 29 July, 1750 he says: as you first put us on electrical experiments, by sending to our Library Company a tube, with directions how to use it; and as an honorable Proprietary enabled us to carry those experiments to a greater height, by his generous present of a complete electrical apparatus; it is fit that both should know, from time to time, what progress we make.

These experiments unfolded new ideas, and new forces were discovered in the Electrical Fire, and Franklin's correspondence abroad detailing them to Collinson and others, though not at first heeded in regular Scientific circles in England, found a